Promoting women’s land rights could stem tobacco growing

On her head, a large saucepan of foodstuff she has uprooted from the garden, sits gracefully. After placing the saucepan outside a hut that serves as a kitchen and store, she rushes to lift her crawling baby girl and immediately latches her to the breast. 

A few feet away, her neighbour rekindles the fire on the side of the curing barn. Large quantities of yellow tobacco leaves are drying inside the kiln.  

“I am not comfortable with the fact that my husband and I grow so much tobacco on our land. However, we have children at the secondary school level and we need money for school fees. Tobacco fetches good and quicker money,” says the mother of four who does not know her age.      

Ayikoru knows the dangers of food insecurity that growing tobacco may cause to a family like hers.

“Yes, we need other food crops so what we do is that after we have harvested the tobacco, we plant other crops. Sometimes, we grow the tobacco and food crops side by side,” she says.

Much as she knows the destructive effect of tobacco growing on the land, Ayikoru is powerless in the face of a culture that dictates that a married woman should not have a say in what is to be grown on her husband’s land. 

“If it were up to me, I would have advised my husband that we apportion the land equally. For example, in one season we could grow groundnuts, maize and beans, and then, in the next season we would plant other crops including tobacco. Unfortunately, it is not up to me,” she says.  

Food insecurity vs cash
Ayikoru’s husband, Dani Maluk, says the money fetched from the sale of the tobacco leaf wipes out all other considerations of food security and environmental degradation.

“I worked in Kampala as a security guard for 10 years and my salary was very poor. When I returned to the village, I faced the same challenges of earning money, and being a man, I had to devise means. I saw that the only way of making money in the village was to grow tobacco. That is why I rented this land,” he says. 

Depending on the yield of the tobacco farmer, tobacco leaf is sold in grades. The lowest grade fetches Shs2,800 per kilogram, while the highest grade brings in Shs9,500 per kilogram. However the prices differ from season to season. Maluk says in a season he can earn upto Shs7 million shillings from his tobacco crop.

“Before I began growing the crop, I was taught about soil conservation. Apart from using fertilisers like NPK, I was taught how to make local manure from the leaves that fall off trees. Instead of burning them, I keep them until they rot and then, I place them on the land to regenerate it’s fertility,” Maluk says. 

He adds those who trained him about soil conservation (he does not mention them) told him that the fertilisers he uses for tobacco do not affect the other food crops he grows with it. 

In this sub-county, like in many other places in the northern part of the country, land is communally owned, with the men having absolute land rights over it. For couples like this one, even if the wife’s name is on the rent agreement, she still does not have a say over how to use the land, or what to grow.

“It is the man who makes the decision over what to grow because in our culture, the man is the head of the family. He comes up with a plan and shares it with his wife for approval. If she approves, they go with the plan and if she does not approve of it, they can drop it,” Maluk says. 

However, he draws the line when it comes to whether his wife has a right to reject tobacco growing. 

“I cannot accept that. Tobacco is the only crop that can earn us enough money to pay school fees and cater for my family’s other needs. For instance, you can get a bucket of cassava at Shs1,000. How much cassava would you need to grow to get the amount of money I get from tobacco growing in one season?” Maluk asks. 

While Ayikoru says she would have loved to rent a piece of land on her own, she does not have the money to do so because her husband controls the proceeds from their farming. 

“I do not see us suffering from food insecurity in the near future, though. If we plant tobacco in the wetlands in February, and plant it in the uplands in March, by July we would have harvested the crop, just in time to plant food crops in the second season,” she says.

Article 17 and 18 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) call on tobacco-growing countries to enact legislation and implement policies and strategies for tobacco farmers to shift to growing food crops to provide a better life for their families, while protecting the environment and the health of the growers. 

To fulfill its obligations to the WHO FCTC, in 2015, Uganda passed into law the Tobacco Control Act, 2015 to control the supply of tobacco and its products to the population; to protect the environment from the effects of tobacco production and consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke; to protect persons from the socioeconomic effects of tobacco production and consumption; and to establish the Tobacco Control Committee.

Stand for Her Land campaign
Land is fundamental for our survival and is central to power and one’s identity. As can be seen in Ayikoru’s case, the country is still far from achieving land justice for women and equality in practice. When a woman holds secure rights to the land, power dynamics shift and her dignity, household decision-making, and economic freedom increase.   

Rita Kemigisa, the advocacy and communications officer for the Stand for Her Land campaign in Uganda, says the global initiative seeks to advance women’s land rights by closing the implementation gaps between the law and practice. 

“Women make up more than half of this country’s population and the highest number in the labour force in the agricultural sector, which happens to be the backbone of this country. Unfortunately, just a handful actually own the land on which they toil,” she says.

In a patriarchal society like this one, the major factor of production and key resource has for long been under male dominance.

“ To rectify this situation, as part of the campaign, we are going into communities to train them on gender transformative approaches. We are helping the community leaders and cultural leaders identify some of the harmful traditional norms that rob women of their land rights,” Kemigisa says. 

A poorly funded land sector will not ensure land justice for women and advocating for an increase in funding is at the forefront of the Stand for Her Land campaign. 

“We are also advocating for increased capacity building of the duty bearers in these land institutions because if they are empowered they will be, in turn, able to enforce gender responsive land services in this country,” Kemigisa says. 

Putting cash-strapped grassroots women at the centre of a campaign to seek land justice for women will go a long way in ensuring that they enjoy their land rights.

“When a woman is able to enjoy her land rights there is no limit to what she can do to transform her family and the country and contribute towards food security,” Kemigisa adds. 

Strong land rights help women break the cycle of poverty and improve their children’s access to education and household nutrition. According to the campaign, worldwide, women’s land rights are key to addressing the deeply gendered issues of climate change, food security, and global health.

Tobacco farming
The tobacco industry claims that tobacco farming can be a source of revenue for governments and a decent livelihood for farmers. In reality, tobacco farming often leads to economic problems, labour exploitation, environmental degradation, and health problems for farmers. Article 17 of the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) encourages parties to promote sustainable alternatives to tobacco farming.

There is a consensus that diversification programmes, designed for the local context, can improve farmers’ livelihoods. Despite a global trend of decreasing tobacco consumption from 2000 to 2020,2 and an overall worldwide decline in tobacco leaf production during the same time period,3 tobacco remains a popular cash-crop choice for many farmers, especially in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs) where the vast majority of tobacco farming takes place.45  The global fall in tobacco leaf production has been accompanied by a production shift from Europe and other high income countries, towards lower income countries like Malawi, Kenya, Uganda and Zambia

The tobacco industry portrays tobacco farming as economically advantageous for governments and especially for farmers. Other claims include that it helps improve resilience, empowers low-income populations and strengthens communities, while the industry also tends to minimise the risks of tobacco growing for health and the environment. 

In reality, tobacco farming often leads to economic hardships, labour exploitation, environmental degradation, and health problems for farmers. Farmers often have less influence within the political process than non-tobacco growers in the same area. 

tobaccotacktics.org 

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Features Editor Caesar Karuhanga Abangirah